Every issue of Spare Rib available online!!

Search and Browse every edition of Spare Rib

Few titles sum up an era and a movement like Spare Rib. When the first issue came out in July 1972, many women were starting to question their position and role in society. The magazine was an active part of the emerging women's liberation movement. It challenged the stereotyping and exploitation of women in what was the first national magazine of its kind. It supported collective, realistic solutions to the hurdles women faced and reached out to women from all backgrounds. Spare Rib became the debating chamber of feminism in the UK. It continued until January 1993 and the full archive of 239 magazines provides a valuable insight into women's lives and this period of feminist activity.

access this amazing resource here

https://journalarchives.jisc.ac.uk/britishlibrary/sparerib

Photopin

Want copyright cleared images and quickly? PhotoPin will search Flickr for Creative Commons licensed images for you

Just search for any topic using the search box on the Photopin website, preview the photo, and click "get photo" to download the photo as well as the proper attribution link.

Click on the photograph itself to check the precise terms of the Creative Commons licence applied to it. You can then Copy the proper attribution info from Photo Pin and paste it into your document

The Institute of Making

image: Institute of Making: silica aerogel, a glass foam whose nano-structure contains up to 99.8% air :  the world's lightest solid

The Institute of Making is a multidisciplinary research club for those interested in the made world: from makers of molecules to makers of buildings, synthetic skin to spacecraft, soup to diamonds, socks to cities. 

They run  programme of symposia, masterclasses and public events to explore the links between academic research and hands-on experience, and to celebrate the sheer joy of stuff.

Its mission is to provide all makers with a creative home in which to innovate, contemplate and understand all aspects of materials and an inspiring place to explore their relationship to making.

At the heart of the Institute of Making is the Materials Library – a growing repository of some of the most extraordinary materials on earth, gathered together for their ability to fire the imagination and advance conceptualisation. A place in which makers from all disciplines can see, touch, research and discuss, so that they can apply the knowledge and experience gained to their own practice.

Alongside the collection is the MakeSpace – a workshop where members and guests can make, break, design and combine both advanced and traditional tools, techniques and materials.

taken from their website

thank you Ingrid for the introduction!

Historic Photography Uncovered

John Dillwyn Llewelyn

Speaking at the official launch of the new Historic Photography show at the National Museum Cardiff its Director General  David Anderson told his audience  to remember the moment. It was the start of a great and new emphasis on what he called the most important collection in the Museum, its photographs. Thanks to the Esme Fairbairn Trust an ongoing digitisation programme has started. Photographs originating  from all departments in the Museum covering Geology ,  Botany, Social History,  Fine Art and more  are being digitised and will form a publicly accessible database in the near future.David Anderson  told us to look out for much more around Photography than has ever been offered before.

For now go and see this first flowering, the most magical and varied collection of photographs and cameras and explanations of photographic processes. This exhibition traces the evolution of photography, as a scientific process, as a social record and a medium for artistic expression.

The photographic material on display dates from the mid-19th to mid-20th century .My favourites show  the beaches I love; Caswell Bay, Tenby, Three Cliffs looking just like they do today but dotted with little ladies in full blown Victorian and Edwardian garb, extraordinary.
The exhibition continues until 19th April

Artes Mundi

YouTube video: The Visitors | Ragnar Kjartansson @HangarBicocca  

Artes Mundi is an internationally focused arts organisation that identifies, recognises and supports contemporary visual artists who engage with the human condition, social reality and lived experience.

Don't miss the chance to see contemporary art on the subject of 'the human condition'. There are artworks to view in three venues: the National Museum of Wales, Cardiff, FfotoGallery at Turner House in Penarth and at Cardiff's Chapter Arts Centre. 

I spent a wonderful hour watching,  listening, sitting, wandering around  Ragnar Kjartansson's  The Visitors (2013). If as I do you enjoy  live music, art and people this is an overwhelming and emotionally affecting work, it  left me feeling rather positive about the human condition . 
http://www.artesmundi.org/en/artists/ragnar-kjartansson



Other works are more difficult and deal in dark subjects, I am thinking particularly of Dutch artist Renzo Martens 'known for his satirical and disturbing video documentaries in which he travels to war-torn countries and places himself narcissistically at the centre of the action, demonstrating how Western spectators consume distant trauma. In 2012, Martens helped found the Institute for Human Activities and initiated its five-year Gentrification Program. By means of strategic inversion Martens comments on the ways in which Western media depict the non-Western world'.
http://www.artesmundi.org/artists/renzo-martens

A Conference will be held at Cardiff Metropolitan University. Straight from the Horse's Mouth, in partnership with Cardiff Metropolitan University School of Art and Design will be a series of talks and conversations offering a rare opportunity to hear the Artes Mundi 6 shortlisted artists speak about core themes and concerns that are central to their practice.

Cardiff Metropolitan University School of Art and Design, Llandaff
Wednesday 21 January 2pm - 6pm
Thursday 22 January 10am - 5pm
Tickets and more information here (conference followed by a social gathering at Chapter, Canton at 7pm).


Read about all the artists here

Artes Mundi employs a team of Live Guides as mediators who have met the shortlisted artists and have extensive knowledge of their work.If you would like to walk and talk with one of the Live Guides in the Museum in Cardiff  join a  tour.  Lasting 45-60 minute the friendly and informative tours are led by one of the  Live Guides and give an overview of the exhibition and its themes.
2pm daily at the Museum (book on arrival at the Information Desk)
For talks and tours at Ffotogallery and Chapter , check their websites for further details.

Images help us 'see': The Refugee Project: an interactive map

photo by Heaferl: Demo "Gleiche Rechte für alle" (Refugee-Solidaritätsdemo) am 16. Februar 2013 in Wien
	'Every day, all over the world, ordinary people must flee their homes for fear of death or persecution. Many leave without notice, taking only what they can carry. Many will never return

They cross oceans and minefields, they risk their lives and their futures. When they cross international borders they are called refugees.
The Refugee Project is an interactive map of refugee migrations around the world in each year since 1975. UN data is complemented by original histories of the major refugee crises of the last four decades, situated in their individual contexts'.

The Refugee Project
http://www.therefugeeproject.org/

(Best viewed in Chrome and Firefox)

Click the About tab (top right ) to read  how to navigate the map. 

You will discover where refugees come from, where they go and articles documenting their stories and the political contexts to their plight.

Family Photo archive, a new addition to the Library at the Bishopsgate Institute

Lucy feeding the pigeons in Trafalgar Square in 1981

There is to be a place in London where old family photos will be collected for researchers to view. News in from Spitalfields Life the wonderful daily blog by the Gentle Author (check it out!) tells us that Stefan Dickers, Archivist at the Bishopsgate Institute is offering a home to unwanted albums and family photographs, where they will be safely stored as an archive. It is to be called the London Family Photo Archive . He is happy to take receipt of  digital copies of photographs if you wish to keep the prints.
“We are looking for family and personal photos of everyday life, no matter if you have lived in London since birth or are a recent arrival to the city,” Stefan explained to me, “We are also looking for photos that depict Londoners on day trips and holidays outside of the city.”
If you might wish to contribute albums or pictures and would like to know more please contact library@bishopsgate.org.uk

This sounds like a wonderful resource in the making....and look at what else they have!
Since opening in 1895, Bishopsgate Library has built up through its collecting policy a record of the development of photography in the capital, alongside it's ever growing collections of books, maps, directories and press cuttings. The emphasis is on the everyday life of London and the Library has specialised in collecting street photography and social and cultural images of London, rather than portraiture or people. The collections are also not limited to famous photographers.
Library Collections cover London History, Labour and Socialist History, Freethought and Humanism, Co-opertaion, Protest and Campaigning, Parliamentary profiles and they hold the Lesbian and Gay Newsmedia archive

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The Inspiration Business

The Do-Lectures are now on Pinterest
here are some titles...

What if we could build a database of dreams?

Be excited. People want to work with the excited person

Build the company that you wouldn't sell

Why you should create something everyday  

Short inspirational talks about lives lived well, businesses that work and ways to be fulfilled. Sound a bit 1960's? But these people run businesses and make good things happen for themselves and for others, that's good for any decade

Photogrammar: Archive of 170,000 Photographs Documenting the Great Depression

A migrant agricultural worker in Marysville migrant camp, trying to work out his year’s earnings. Taken in California in 1935 by Dorothea Lange.

In the 1930's The Farm Security Administration—Office of War Information (FSA-OWI) hired photographers to travel across America to document the poverty generated by the Great Depression, hoping to build support for New Deal programs being championed by President Roosevelt. Marvellous photographers like Dorothea Lange, Walker Evans, and Arthur Rothstein were among the photographers who took part. In all 170,000 photographs were taken and lodged with  The Library of Congress. A link to these LC webpages for FSA is to be found in Cardiff Met Electronic Library>Databases A-Z>Farm Security Administration (Cardiff Met password required).

Now Yale University has launched Photogrammar, a   platform for organizing, searching, and viewing these  historic photographs.
The Photogrammar platform gives you the ability to search through the images by photographer and alsoprovides an interactive map twith  geographical information about 90,000 photographs in the collection.

Calling all performers!!! Scratch Platform - Sunday, August 31st 2014 - Four Bars, Cardiff - From 7pm

Scratch Platform is a brand new event in Cardiff and the showing of work on Sunday August 31st is the first of what will be a regular event happening every other month. The idea is to give Live Artists, Sound Artists, Cabaret Performers, Poets and other artists who perform an opportunity to show their work (whether it is ‘finished’, ‘polished', in development or otherwise) to an interested and supportive audience. The showing will start at 7pm and the venue will be open until pub closing time!

Any work that is designed to be performed to an audience needs at some point to be performed!

It will be free to take part in and free to watch. There are no ‘rules’ as such other than that any piece shouldn’t last longer than ten minutes - in order to give everyone a fair chance. There will be no competitive element and we want to encourage a very open, pressure free and supportive environment.

It’s a lovely intimate venue and we are able to provide some technical assistance- we have a PA, lighting rig and access to a projector and screen. Will will also be filming the event to offer the performers a copy of the documentation (this will be free, basically bring a memory stick or external drive and we will copy the footage to it).

At the end of each event we will have a performance from an invited artist. On August 31st this will be Foxy and Husk

We hope to draw artists and an audience from the artist communities in Cardiff and further afield. There will be an opportunity for the performers to display business cards, CV’s and other information that they might wish to share. We will also offer feedback forms that members of the audience can fill in.

If you would like to show your work then please can you send me your technical requirements (will you need music playback for example or a microphone(s)?) and give me a very brief breakdown of what your 10 minute piece will be.

bring your friends!
any questions? 

Rowan Talbot

rowan@fizzievents.com

       

Lights Out on August 4th

“The lamps are going out all over Europe; we shall not see them lit again in our lifetime” Sir Edward Grey, British Foreign Secretary, August 1914

National Library of Wales Cymru 1914 archive

Everyone in the UK is invited to take part in LIGHTS OUT by turning off their lights from 10pm to 11pm on 4 August, leaving on a single light or candle to mark the centenary of the outbreak of the First World War .

Millions of people are expected to participate and hundreds of local authorities, iconic buildings, national organisations including the BBC and the Royal British Legion, parish councils and places of worship have already pledged their support. Iconic landmarks such Blackpool Illuminations, the Houses of Parliament, Eden Project, Imperial War Museums and Tower Bridge will turn off their lights; the Royal British Legion has launched a campaign for at least one million candles to be lit across the UK and theatre productions including those of the National Theatre’s War Horse, both nationally and internationally, will invite their audiences to take part in LIGHTS OUT after their curtain calls.

 Leading international artists have been commissioned by 14-18 NOW to create special public artworks, for one night only in the form of a light source.

Bedwyr Williams’ work Traw will be a large-scale video and sound installation  at the site of the North Wales Memorial Arch, Bangor. The memorial takes centre stage in front of images projected onto the enormous facing wall of Bangor University’s new Pontio Arts and Innovation Centre.

Taking photographs found in the Cymru 1914 archive, Williams has created a sequence of images of local soldiers and civilians   affected by WW1. Excluding all uniform and references to rank, the close up faces reveal something of the individual’s personality and personal sacrifice in a war where death was measured in millions.

Bedwyr Williams is one of Wales’ leading visual artists. In 2013 he represented Wales at the Venice Biennale.

Commenting on the project Bedwyr Williams said: “As a young art student I walked past the memorial arch in Bangor many times and I have to admit that I never gave it a huge amount of thought. Working on this project I’ll never be able to walk past this place again without thinking of the lives lost fighting in the First World War.”

Audio Arts sound art magazine, aural archive of artists’ voices and sound art

Audio Arts: Volume 5 No 3 & 4 audio cassette Live to Air comprises a compilation of artists' soundworks, includes contributions from: Bruce McLean, Harvey Mangolds

As I tidy and throw away redundant materials from the Slide Library here at Cardiff Metropolitan University prior to a move to another campus it really helps when I know that what is going into the bin is not therefore lost to history. the old audio arts cassette has been binned but every volume from that magazine of sounds and sound art is available still! On the Tate website here.
Explore and listen to this innovative audio cassette-magazine featuring exclusive contributions from more than 900 individual artists including Joseph Beuys, Ian Breakwell, Tracey Emin and Andy Warhol. Audio Arts was  established by Bill Furlong in 1972 and includes soundworks, interviews and  coverage of exhibitions. You will find all 24 volumes from Audio Arts published between 1973 and 2006
including  the Audio Arts supplements which focus on particular themes and individuals, from the state of British art in the late 1970s to a feature on Damien Hirst in 2003.
Read more here

CC Search (Copyright free images)

from CC Search 

keyword =business meeting

I am often asked to recommend a website to go to for Copyright free images. The Electronic Library at Cardiff Met offers many links to image databases  that we recommend, some (marked with a black or a green copyright symbol)  like Bridgeman Education and Visual Arts Data Service offer copyright free images for educational use.

 I can also recommend a single page to which you can navigate on the internet which will allow you to search a whole selection of different image databases ...not just images of art and design... made available under a  Creative Commons licence.

Creative Common licences all offer, as minimum, permission to copy so long as the image is marked clearly with details of who first created it (attribution). To learn more about Creative Commons licences (which are voluntarily  applied by creators to their works and can apply to text, images , music and all copyrighted materials) you should go here.
To search for all those Creative Commons licensed images  go here. Enter a keyword and select a source to search from the range offered ( various interesting websites ) results will bring back Creative Commons licenced images, moving images and sound.

Pathe News on Youtube

Pathe News Inc.

In 1895 Charles Pathé began his quest to document the historical events of the late 19th and early 20th Centuries. By 1914, Pathé produced the first weekly newsreel.
British Pathé, the U.K. newsreel archive company, has uploaded its entire 100-year collection of 85,000 historic films in high resolution to YouTube.

https://www.youtube.com/user/britishpathe

The collection, which spans 1896 to 1976, comprises some 3,500 hours of historical footage of major events, notable figures, fashion, travel, sports and culture. It includes extensive film from both World War I and World War II.
The Home page displays a choice of popular uploads, days that shook the world, disasters, inventions, animals, daredevils, celebrities and  compilations.  'Weirdest newsreels' includes a newsreel about a progressive school , a tall man marrying a short lady and  an obese three year old . In contrast you can also find footage from the Battle of the Somme , the SAS storming the Iranian Embassy in London and a documentary on the assassination of the American President John F Kennedy claiming the CIA killed him.

Behind the Scenes of the Museum: Artists in Collections

Installation for Woverhampton Art Gallery 2012    Photo credit D8

10am – 4.30pm, Wednesday 14 May, 2014
National Museum Wales
Reardon Smith Lecture Theatre, Cathays Park, Cardiff, CF10 3NP

If you are interested in the ways artists have interacted with Museum collections then this is the event for you.

The event will include:

·         James Putnam, curator and writer, discussing shifts in the way that artists are working with museum collections and their role in activating engagement.

·         Andrew Renton, Head of Applied Art at the National Museum of Wales, in conversation with artist Sarah Younan about their collaboration and what artists can bring to the interpretation of collections.

·         Jon Monaghan, artist and animator, leading a workshop on 3d printing as a tool for creating user-generated content.

·         Artist Helen Snell, talking about collaboration and what it's like to work in the 'institution' of a museum.

·         Emma Price, independent art consultant, offering practical advice on developing projects that utilise museum collections.

This event is free to attend but places are limited so booking is essential

Book now at eventbrite > 

For more information contact Alicia Miller, Axisweb Associate in Wales: alicia@axisweb.org

Illustrating Heart of Darkness

                                                                Alison Bryant, UK


The  25 longlisted entries for this year’s Book Illustration Competition run by The House of Illustration have been published as a Gallery on their website here 
They illustrate Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. 
The winner and five runners up will be announced in September. The winner will be asked to provide a total of 9 illustrations for the final Folio Society book, as well as a binding design, and must agree to complete the commission within the given deadline


There is a  a gallery of past winners of the Book Illustration Competition here

Copyright and images-advice sheet from the Intellectual Property Office

Apollo and Allegory of Painting, from the Loves of the Gods
Giulio Bonasone (Italian, active Rome and Bologna, 1531–after 1576) 
from the  Metropolitan Museum of Art 


With Flickr, Facebook and Instagram all becoming such a big part of everyday lives, people can often forget their legal responsibilities when using images and photos online. 

In order to ensure consumers have a better understanding of copyright law the government has launched a ‘copyright notices service’. 

The first notice published today, provides guidance about things to be aware of when uploading and using images on the internet. This includes advice for situations where you want to use photos taken by a professional photographer or what you need to consider before uploading images  to social media sites .

Copyright notice #1 can be found here: http://www.ipo.gov.uk/c-notice-201401.pdf

Data Visualisation: Beautiful Science

Beautiful Science: Picturing Data, Inspiring Insight

Exhibition at The British Library

20 February - 26 May 2014

The Folio Society Gallery; admission free

Turning numbers into pictures that tell important stories and reveal the meaning held within is an essential part of what it means to be a scientist. Beautiful Science explores how our understanding of ourselves and our planet has evolved alongside our ability to represent, graph and map the mass data of the time.

The associated events for the exhibition are listed here

http://www.bl.uk/whatson/exhibitions/beautiful-science/events/index.html

Unfortunately  this event….

Andy Kirk, founder of Visualising Data will be holding his renowned Introduction to Data Visualisation course at the British Library to coincide with Beautiful Science: Picturing Data, Inspiring Insight.

…is sold out but fear not you can get to see what Andy is about by looking at his website

http://www.visualisingdata.com/

Students who came to my Visual Literacy workshop last term will already know about the King of Data visualisation  Hans Rosling Professor of Global Health, Karolinska Institutet. Edutainer & co-founder of Gapminder Foundation, Stockholm, Sweden · gapminder.org

Meanwhile as with everything and especially anything that is immensely visually attractive -beware of being misled!! Here is a warning article about taking care to question the veracity of infographics from John Burn-Murdoch of the Guardian

Reel to Real

'Reel to Real' is a sound curating project, funded by the Esmée Fairbairn Collections Fund, designed to catalogue, digitise and  make available online, in gallery spaces and beyond, the Pitt Rivers Museum's unique archival field recordings. The content of the recordings ranges from spirits singing in the rainforests of the Central African Republic to children's songs and games in playgrounds throughout Europe.

The project website includes information about and playlists from all of the Museum's original ethnographic recordings, video and interview resources, ethnomusicology seminars, their SoundCloud account and much more. 

Reel to Real Project Website here.

Visualiser combining Bayaka sound waves and images

The related  SoundCloud account can be found here, and customised playlists and sets can be found here.

How we view Civil Rights, the images, the meanings and the roles of photography

Human Rights Human Wrongs 5.45pm 5 March 2014 at the National Museum Cardiff in the Reardon Smith lecture theatre

Bob Fitch, Martin L. King (Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.),

Birmingham, Alabama, United States of America,

December 1965.

Reproduction from the Black Star Collection,

Ryerson University. Courtesy of the Ryerson Image Centre.

Using the 1948 Universal Declaration of human rights as a point of departure, Mark Sealy, MBE, RPS Hood Medal, Director Autograph ABP and Founding CEO of Rivington Place London, examines whether images of political struggle, suffering, and of victims of violence work for or against humanitarian objectives, especially when considering questions of race, representation, ethical responsibility and the cultural position of the photographer.

The talk will reflect on the imagery that has informed perceptions of civil rights, ranging from historic events such as the Selma to Montgomery March and Martin Luther King’s “I have a Dream” speech, to the independence movements in many African countries as well as more recent examples of injustice within wider global conflicts. Here the historical and contemporary roles of photography to validate and question the case for civil and human rights will be examined from different perspectives.

The event is FREE but booking is essential as places are limited.

This lecture forms part of a series accompanying a project by  National Museum Wales to work on its rich and diverse historic photographic collections

To reserve your place,  email: Historic.Photography@museumwales.ac.uk

with your name and contact telephone number.